


Shelving Books

by dot_the_writer



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Library, Alternate Universe - Muggle, Anxiety, Fluff, M/M, trivia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 14:11:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18852670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dot_the_writer/pseuds/dot_the_writer
Summary: He was made of tea and books and nervous habits, and he had a date with a nameless boy who excelled at trivia and always —always— sounded excited when Remus picked up the phone.





	Shelving Books

**Author's Note:**

> Just a fluffy little Wolfstar one-shot I wrote. Hope you enjoy!

“Hello?”

A pause. Remus could hear snickering and muffled voices on the other end of the phone.

“Hello?” He tried again.

“Hey, mate!” The voice was enthusiastic. “I was wondering if you could answer a question for me?”

The snickering turned into full-out laughter in the background.

Remus sighed. When he was young, he dreamed about working in a library: shelving books, shushing people, and reading on the job. The reality was so much better than he imagined — he helped to plan community events, taught the elderly how to use the internet, and, occasionally, did get to shelve books. But he also dealt with people using the librarians as encyclopedias, calling or coming in and asking the most insane questions.

He sighed. “I can try. What’s the question?”

“Great! Prongsie here thinks a group of ravens is called a rabble.”

Remus paused. “You want me to tell you about ravens.” He couldn’t lie, it was one of the stranger requests he had received.

“Yes,” the voice responded. “See, I have to be right.”

“Sure,” Remus answered. “And apparently, I’m here just to feed your ego.”

A pause.

Remus regretted his remark, though he still meant every word.

The laughter increased, and Remus pulled the phone away from his ear.

“Fuck off, James,” the voice said, slightly muffled. “Librarian — shame I don’t know your name. I like your sass. But I’m right, aren’t I? A group of ravens is _obviously_ an unkindness.”

“I don’t like you,” Remus said. He sighed. Loudly. “But, unfortunate as it may be, you’re right.”

“I told you, James! I’m already right when it comes to trivia,” the voice said, the phone pulled away from their mouth. It returned. “Thanks, mate.”

And it disconnected.

Remus was left, standing in the library, unsure if that call was something that actually happened, or if it took place solely in his mind.

 

* * *

 

The calls became a daily occurrence. Always the voice, always someone named James in the background, always asking random, asinine trivia questions that Remus somehow knew the answer to.

It became part of Remus’ routine: shelve books, help a struggling uni student with their research paper, answer the phone for the voice and their trivia question.

Even if he didn’t answer, somehow, it was him who ended up with the phone.

“They want the sarcastic one,” Remus’ coworker, Peter, said, walking into the break room. The cord was stretched as far as it could go, barely reaching Remus as he sat at the table and drank his tea.

He sighed, pretending to be put-upon as he took the phone. “I’m on my break.”

“But this is important! No one but you knows the answer to this!”

“I highly doubt that’s true,” Remus said. He couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from quirking up, a barely-there smile. “You always know the answer before you call.”

“But James won’t listen to me! He doubts my genius — librarian, I need you,” the voice pleaded. “Prongs thinks the moon landing happened on August 8th, not July 20th.”

There was muttering in the background.

“Unfortunately, you’re right once again,” Remus said. But instead of letting the voice respond and end the call, as was their usual, he kept talking. “Did you know that he didn’t walk on the moon until the 21st, though? UTC, of course.”

“Of course,” the voice answered. It sounded amused.

“And,” Remus continued, “did you know Armstrong messed up the line? Well, he claims to have said it with the ‘a’ — ‘a man’ — but it’s too hard to tell in the recording.”

“Aren’t you just so very knowledgeable about the moon,” the voice said, sounding fond. “Just a casual fan of the moon; a moony-loony moon man.”

Remus couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up. “Are you always this ridiculous?”

There was a slight scuffle on the other end. “It’s worse — stop pulling! It’s worse when he’s talking to you.”

“James — don’t sell me out! Moony, I promise I’m always this wonderful; James is just jealous that he no longer has my full, undivided attention.”

A snort in the background, presumably James.

The bell on the front desk rang.

Remus waited for a moment, then sighed when he didn’t hear Peter’s voice. “I need to go — I have actual customers to help.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow!”

“No —” The phone disconnected. Remus sighed.

 

* * *

 

“I might not need to call you anymore,” the voice said. It sounded forlorn.

“Can I hang up then?”

“No, you may not. Don’t you want to know why?”

“Not especially.”

“Are you going to take a guess?” The voice was hopeful.

Remus smirked to himself as he twirled the phone cord around his finger. “Probably not.”

“Well, fine. It’s because I won radio trivia! Clearly, I am the master — what can you tell me that I don’t already know?”

“To be fair,” Remus said, “every time you called me, you already knew the answer.”

There was a long sigh on the other end. “You’re right. I’ve always been smarter than you — but our calls have allowed this relationship to grow and to blossom.”

“Has it?”

“Yes.” The voice took a deep breath. “Which is why I want you to come with me.”

“Come where?”

“To the concert! My prize for winning!”

“. . . You want me, someone you’ve never met, to join you at a concert.”

“Mmmhmm.”

Remus laughed. “I don’t know you.”

“Yes, you do! C’mon — where’s your sense of adventure, Moony?”

“I work at a library. I think it’s safe to say I don’t have much of one.”

“I don’t believe it.” The voice paused, and Remus realised how quiet it was on that end of the phone.

“James not there today?”

“No,” the voice mumbled. “He . . . He gave me a hard time about the concert.” Pause. “About asking you.”

Remus took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I’ll come.” Remus felt his heartbeat increase; he felt sweaty and slightly nauseous. Man, he hated being brave. “When is it?”

“Tonight.”

“Tonight?” Remus squeaked.

“Yep. What time are you off work?”

“Seven.” Remus took a deep breath. And another.

“Perfect, I’ll pick you up from there.”

The phone clicked, and Remus was alone. He spun in a graceless circle, looking for Peter, for comfort, for anyone to tell him that didn’t just happen.

Instead, he managed to wrap the phone cord around himself and draw the attention of a group of old women knitting at one of the large tables in the front of the library. At the sound of their giggles, he ducked behind the counter, working to unravel the cord as he did so.

Sitting on the ground — not hiding, he told himself — Remus took a calming breath, the way his therapist had taught him when it seemed things were spinning out of control. One, two, three, he counted, and released. Breathe in, breathe out. Remus looked down at his ink-stained fingers and pulled the cuffs of his oversized jumper down to hide his nails, still healing after he last bit them.

He was made of tea and books and nervous habits, and he had a date with a nameless boy who excelled at trivia and always — _always_ — sounded excited when Remus picked up the phone.

 

* * *

 

The day passed more slowly than it had a right to. The clock tick-tick-ticked until Remus couldn’t take it; he ended up shelving books with the radio on in the background, but the hosts started talking about trivia and he couldn’t take that either. Peter found him, gave him a sharp look and backed away, unwilling to interrupt when Remus was on the edge of a breakdown.

Five turned into six, six turned into six thirty, six thirty turned into six thirty-five.

When the clock finally hit six forty-five, Remus ran to the back room, where there was a small mirror. He didn’t have a change of clothes — he hoped the concert was nothing too extravagant — but he ran his fingers through his unruly brown curls, trying to make them look somewhat styled.

It didn’t work.

Another deep breath. He smiled at himself in the mirror.

The bell rang, and he walked back out, knowing this was as good as he was going to look, coming off an eight-hour shift.

The man at the counter was a verified sex god: long, black hair (which had mastered the art of looking stylishly messy), high cheekbones framing stormy grey eyes, and a form-fitting black t-shirt underneath a beat-up leather jacket. Remus internally cursed the waist-high counter in the way, as it impeded the rest of the view.

The man flashed a smile; it lit up his face, suddenly he looked like less of a model and more of a mischievous youth.

“Hey,” the man said.

Remus froze. It was the voice.

He tried to cover his surprise, tried to school his expression into something less shocked, but by the smirk now gracing his companion’s face, he knew it was a lost cause.

“What?” The man pouted. “Who were you expecting?”

Remus ran his eyes deliberately over the other man, the strangeness of the situation making him bold. “I certainly wasn’t expecting this.”

“Sirius,” the man said, holding out a hand. He grinned. “Like the star.”

“Remus,” he responded, meeting Sirius’ hand with his own.

“You ready?”

Remus glanced up at the clock. “Yeah, my shift just finished.”

He clocked out and found Peter, gesturing surreptitiously to Sirius, who still stood at the counter.

Peter raised his eyebrows. “Have fun, mate.”

Remus choked back a laugh, unsure of how to respond.

Luckily, as they left the library, Sirius unconsciously helped to quiet Remus’ nerves. As they walked to the station, Sirius spoke the whole time. His movements were animated as he told stories of trouble and adventure, making him seem larger than life. He didn’t walk like Remus — afraid of being noticed; instead, he bounded, jumping across puddles and walking backwards when he needed eye contact to make an important point. His smile, his laugh — his everything — was infectious and Remus couldn’t help but smile back.

They took the tube, sitting thigh to thigh on the seats. Remus felt Sirius’ eyes on him, and he couldn’t help the blush that spread across his cheeks at the knowledge that someone as wonderful as Sirius seemed to find him interesting.

“I wondered,” Sirius said, his voice quiet, “if I had made it clear enough that this was a date.”

The blush deepened.

He smirked. “Now, I think I did.”

“Fuck you,” Remus said, grabbing Sirius’ hand. If this was what it meant to be brave, he never wanted to stop.

They sat there, stop after stop, the doors opening and Remus people watching as all sorts stepped aboard. He’d always been interested in other’s lives; that may have come from being poorly so often as a child. Sirius, on the other hand, couldn’t sit still. Part of him was always moving, fidgeting — he ran a hand through his hair, played with the rings adorning his graceful fingers, tapped his foot in a staccato beat Remus couldn’t follow.

He was lovely.

“What concert are we going to?” Remus asked, curiosity sufficiently piqued by the mystery surrounding their date.

Sirius turned to look at him, eye bright with mischief. “Does it matter?”

Remus laughed. “Is it bad? Do I have to sit through an awful show for our first date?”

“I don’t know — honest,” he said, at Remus’ look of amusement. “They gave me the tickets, I have them here somewhere,” he muttered, fumbling through his leather jacket, ”but it wasn’t a band I’ve heard of before.”

He pulled them out, two crinkled tickets, and handed them to Remus.

“Sirius.” Remus stared at the tickets in his hand. “This isn’t a concert.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, brow wrinkled in genuine confusion. “They told me I won tickets to a show.”

Remus laughed in wonder. “Yes — a show. A play. Sirius, we’re going to the theater.”

“Oh.”

Remus looked at himself, dressed in his stretched-out, oversized jumper and glanced at Sirius’ outfit. “We’re not going to fit in.”

Sirius shrugged. “I’m used to standing out.”

“I’m sure you are,” Remus said, hating how affectionate his voice sounded.

“Oh, Moony,” Sirius sighed, letting his head rest on Remus’ shoulder.

They rode that way for the rest of the journey. Their hands were warm and slightly sweaty where they were pressed together, and Sirius’  hair tickled against Remus’ cheek, but the moment was perfect because of the imperfections.

They had only met hours ago; Remus didn’t know Sirius’ surname, much less anything more important, but there was something undeniably special about the other man. Something that made him want to hold on for the ride.

They pulled into the station and he squeezed Sirius’ hand. “This is our stop.”

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos + comments = <3
> 
> Thanks for reading; come find me on [Tumblr](https://all-drarry-to-me.tumblr.com)!


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